A Dietary Campfire, by Isaac Kemsley, Kindergarten Teacher at Madrona School, Bainbridge Island, Washington
In the Salmonberry Kindergarten, Teacher Jamie and I talk with your children about food… a lot.
We remember the days of the week by what is being served for snack on any given day. We tell stories about our childhoods and the foods that we loved growing up: I share stories of harvesting and putting up stores in the pantry for the winters in Alaska (salmon, blueberries, cherries, etc…) and Teacher Jamie shares tales of her Nona Villella and the family around her big dining room table.
The children share food-related stories from their own lives at the snack table, and our returning students often reflect about how they thought that they didn’t like a certain food and then with practice (and regular “no thank you bites”) learned that they did!
At the end of the half-day program, the full-day children wash up, gather their lunches brought from home, and join the grade schoolers at the picnic tables for our lunch time. Then of course, the topic again… turns to food. “Look! You have carrots! I have carrots too!”
During these many food conversations, Teacher Jamie and I often use the Dietary Campfire analogy to explain how we ought to be stoking our physical fires…
The Dietary Campfire analogy resonates with the group, because the Salmonberry children help us make fires in our fire pit throughout the year in the most inclement weather. They understand when we say that dried fruit and sweet treats are like paper or wood shavings that flare quickly, burn fiercely, and just as quickly disappear. They can see that the kindling that we chop together burns hot and fast and disappears in little time, so when we equate that to crackers and chips and other simple carbohydrates which are tasty and don’t fill us up, it makes perfect sense. Next comes the quartered wood, which like the vegetables, takes longer to burn and makes a warm and full fire but still needs to be replaced often. The meat/cheese/bean/nut proteins are the log rounds which burn for a very long time and allow the fire to keep going without as much tending.
By using imaginative language and pictorial analogies, we allow the children to take an active part in the conversation and begin their personal involvement with the lifelong process of healthy eating.
